


Max's Acceptance

by hardlynoticeable



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Friend Fiction, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 16:38:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13057953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardlynoticeable/pseuds/hardlynoticeable
Summary: I had no idea how to title this. Basically a little story about Max endearing herself to Mike without even knowing. I thought it would be cute if she melted Mike's icy demeanour without trying, just by looking after Will and being herself. Also, Max didn't really interact with Will at all after her intro. That had to be fixed.Could be Byeler, if you like, but nothing blatant. I fully support Will being gay and getting all the love and acceptance he deserves.





	Max's Acceptance

**Author's Note:**

> Features Mike being a grump at the start and clumsy the whole way through.

In spite of everything with the Demo-Dogs, the Mind Flayer, and El’s return, Mike’s attitude towards Max didn’t immediately improve. He was on edge; waiting for Will to be cleared by the doctors and returned to normal life, waiting for Hopper to figure out how they could safely see El now that they both knew where the other was and couldn’t be kept apart, and the addition of Max to their Party without a unanimous vote still pissed him off. Lucas urged Max to give him more time. “He’s just weird right now,” he told her. “There’s a lot on his mind. He’ll chill out.”

So, she waited. She didn’t push to be more included or trusted as the days flew by and Mike’s icy exterior remained. She just held tough and waited for him to see that she wouldn’t be pushed away. It took weeks for her efforts to pay off. Dustin claimed to be impressed; apparently, they were expecting it to take months. Instead, three weeks after they closed the gate, Mike went through a complete transformation. Suddenly he was nice and accepting, eager to have her be part of the Party. He saved up allowance and money from shoveling driveways to add to her, Dustin, and Lucas’s stockpiled savings, giving them the final twenty dollars they needed to get her a Walkie Talkie with the range to at least reach Will and Dustin. He gave her one of the cookies in his packed lunches whenever she didn’t have anything sweet in hers. He started going through D&D manuals looking for a better role for her, one that actually existed in the game. It was bizarre, and Max was desperate to understand what had suddenly changed his mind about her.

  
One day, when she and he were alone waiting for the others in his basement, she finally asked, “What did I do to make you like me all the sudden?”

  
He froze with his pen still mid-word, working on his essay for English class at the coffee table, and looked up at her with surprise in his eyes. “I thought you knew,” he said, eyes wide. “I wasn’t very subtle.”

  
“Obviously you were,” she scoffed, rolling her eyes.

  
Mike put his pen down and straightened up to face her. He ignored her sass entirely and asked, “Do you remember the day Will came back to school?” patiently. She nodded, not sure where he was going with that particular line of conversation. “I guess it didn’t mean anything to you. You forgot. But it meant a lot to me. And Will, probably.”

  
Max frowned, confused, and tried to remember what was so important about that day. Mike didn’t leave her to struggle for long. He launched in to his recollection of the day Will returned to school, back in November, on the day she saw real snow for the first time.

  
_He went looking for Will at recess. He was alone; Dustin and Lucas were inside helping Mr. Clarke clean up after a rather eventful chemistry lesson. He had gone back for his gloves, leaving Will alone outside. He instantly regretted it when he came around the corner to find that Troy had cornered Will against the gym wall, looming over him so intimidatingly that it cast his whole body in shadow. Will was shaking, and not from the cold. He couldn’t hear what Troy was saying, but he could guess from the sneer on his lips and the expression on Will’s face. Only one thing made him that upset outside of reminders of the Upside Down and the Shadow Monster._

  
_He started forward, fully prepared the defend his friend in whatever way necessary to keep him from the vicious and likely homophobic insults being hurled at him. The snow slowed him down, made it impossible to run, and he hadn’t made it three feet before he skidded and slipped, falling face first into the thick layer of white covering the ground. It didn’t hurt, but he struggled when he tried to stand._

  
_Troy advanced on Will, hands rising in a way that promised him immediate hard, and he tried unsuccessfully to scramble to his feet. His heart was racing, and he was terrified to think that he was going to have to watch Will get hurt when the only thing keeping him from helping him was his own clumsiness. Luckily, he didn’t have to. Out of nowhere, a snowball came hurling into the side of Troy’s face._

  
_“Hey, asshole! Back off!” Mike turned his head to see Max running far more gracefully through the snow to Will’s rescue. She bent down and scooped up an even bigger ball of snow as she ran and heaved it with all her strength at Troy. The shock of it made Troy stumble and Will slipped away, darting to meet Max halfway. Neither of them seemed to have noticed Mike lying just ten feet away in the snow._

  
_But he noticed everything about them. Max’s coat was halfway buttoned, as if she was putting it on when she noticed Will in trouble, and her hands were rapidly turning red from touching the snow without gloves. She had gloves; Dustin had brought her extras. But she was more concerned about Will than putting them on. Her bright green hat was back by the school, discarded in the snow. When Will reached her, she caught him and shoved him behind herself, protecting him from a now livid Troy._

  
_“You little bitch,” he snarled. Mike finally got to his knees, but didn’t stand. Something compelled him to watch and see what Max did next._

  
_She leaned down, gathered another ball of snow, and threw as hard as she could. This time the snowball soared right over Troy’s shoulder. But Will, ever quick to catch on, passed her another ball. He prepped while she threw, until the amount of snow hitting Troy in rapid succession knocked Troy off balance and he crashed to the ground. As soon as he was down, Max whirled, grabbed Will’s hand, and together they ran away. Mike ran after them at a distance, watching Will scoop up her hat on their way back to the gym entrance around the corner. One of the doors had been left open, allowing the students at recess to come back in if the cold proved to be too much. He watched from the doorway while they came to a stop behind the bleachers._

  
_Max leaned on the wall, panting for breath, and Will looked at her with complete adoration. “Thank you,” he breathed with a smile._

  
_“No big deal,” she replied. Her smile matched his, even as she struggled to catch her breath. “Damn, it’s hard to breath in the cold!” Will laughed with her and Mike’s heart seized in his chest. It seemed like forever since he had seen Will smile so big or laugh so genuinely._  


  
_Will reached out and took both her frost-reddened hands in his, rubbing over them to erase the cold from her skin. When it didn’t immediately help, he lifted them to his lips and blew hot air into the cupped space between them. It was the most intimacy and affection Mike had ever seen him offer a girl before. Max’s smile grew shy, but her cheeks didn’t flush with embarrassment, only cold._

  
_“That guy is such an ass,” she told Will quietly, watching him warm her hands without protest. “Does he always do shit like that to you?”_

  
_“Anytime he catches me alone, yeah,” Will admitted. He looked a little embarrassed to admit it, but didn’t let the humiliation of being Troy’s victim cause him to shy away from her. “I guess I’m an easy target, since I’m so much smaller than him. Smaller and weaker.”_

  
_“Does he…” Max hesitated. “Does he call you those names every time?” Her lips lost their smile, looking at Will through her eyelashes. Mike knew exactly what names she meant. They were the same ones that made Will shake and sometimes cry. Troy’s favorite insult for Will, echoed unknowingly from Lonnie._

  
_Will looked down in shame. “Yeah,” he acknowledged timidly. “Any chance he gets. He calls Dustin Toothless, Mike Frog Face, and makes fun of Lucas for being black and me for being…Because he thinks…Thinks I’m g-gay.”_

  
_Mike knew exactly why it was so hard for him to say it, to admit what everyone thought of him to someone who, as of yet, didn’t know anything about everyone’s suspicions. It broke Mike’s heart to think how much everyone in their miserable little town had hurt him. He waited with baited breath to see if Max would do the same._

  
_Her shoulders sagged a little seeing Will struggle with his words, watching his lip tremble with sadness and shame. She turned her hands in Will’s, capturing his hands tightly between her own, and squeezed until he looked up. “I should’ve thrown a rock at him instead of snow,” she growled. A smile tried to slip onto his lips, but he was still embarrassed and waiting in fear of her reaction. “What a jerk. Like anyone can control what they look like or who they love,” she carried on. Then she backtracked. “Not that you **are** gay. Just…If you were, it’d be a stupid thing to make fun of you for. To make fun of anyone for really. No one choses who they love or who they’re attracted to. It’s stupid. He’s stupid. Screw him.”_

  
_A smile grew on Will’s face. A real, pure smile of relief and happiness._

  
_Mike’s heart swelled with respect for her and a smile broke across his lips to match Will’s. That was almost exactly what he thought, what he had always wanted to tell Will but hadn’t been able to. He could spin a beautifully eloquent story for a D &D campaign with ease, but expressing his feelings was harder than pulling teeth sometimes. Suddenly he felt guilty for the way he had treated Max, for all his suspicion, and he was filled with a newfound determination to make up for it all. She belonged in their Party. She was good and clever and made Will smile. She knew just what to say to make Will feel accepted without pressuring him to know whether he was or wasn’t what everyone thought. She protected them, fought alongside them seamlessly, and he felt like a complete dumbass for taking so long to realize it. He swore to make up for the lost time and for his behavior then and there._  
_A second later, Will glanced around and spotted him watching them, ending his time of self-contemplation by yelling, “Mike!” and hopping away from Max with a blush on his cheeks._

  
“I figured I had some time to make up for,” Mike admitted, looking bashful. “I was a stubborn ass.”

  
Max stared at him blankly for a long moment and he waited patiently while she processed what he had told her, what he had reminded her of. To her, rescuing Will had been natural, instinctive. Telling him how she felt about Troy had felt more like her oversharing than reassuring him. Yes, that had been a big moment in her friendship with Will, but not in the grand scheme of things. It hadn’t changed anything for her the way it had for Mike. It certainly shouldn’t have brought her closer to Mike.

  
She finally blinked as everything sunk in. She took a deep breath, then let it out in a huff. “So…So helping Dustin with Dart, stopping Billy, helping to torch the tunnels…None of that was good enough to prove I was trustworthy or that I belonged in the Party. But making Will smile was?” she asked in disbelief. “Seriously?”

  
Mike shrugged, smiling self-consciously. Max threw her eraser at him, but his smile was contagious. She grinned and shook her head. “You’re a dumbass!” she exclaimed, half serious and half amused.

  
Mike couldn’t even deny it. He just laughed and threw the eraser back playfully. The others arrived five minutes later to find them in the middle of a full-on war, throwing whatever harmless projectile they could at each other and laughing with delight. They only noticed their arrival when a stray piece of crumbled paper missed Max by a mile and bounced harmlessly off Lucas’s head.

  
“Really?” he yelled while Mike and Max roared with laughter at the offense on his face. Even though being struck annoyed him, he liked seeing them laughing together. They all did. They were good together. They all were.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm unsatisfied with my wrap up, but I'm pleased I actually finished it. Haven't done that in a while


End file.
